Jenna and I to Lamar:The day of Two's!

We left around 7:15AM and hit Lamar in just over an hour. The temperature was a tad cold at -9 Fahrenheit. As we drove through the valley a heard of bison were to our the west of us and we stopped out a pullout due to a great set of scoping eyes by that of Jenna. Some how she managed to spot two moose that were following a herd of bison. We stopped to get some pictures and this was my favorite of them all. The sun was rising beyond the mountains in the greater distance and created some nice colors on the snow with only the two silhouette images of the moose. We were hoping for wolves but will settle on moose any day of the week. Rumors were that they liked to hang out by pebble creek but we were lucky enough to spot them way before. On to the hope of seeing some wolves.

We sat in the pullout after Hitch and Post and scanned the whole area for five minutes and couldn't find a single flightless animal. We said to hell with it and moved to Pebble Creek for a chance to see some moose. No luck there so we headed back to the spot where two wolves have been seen the morning before. Still no luck. I stood outside the car for 10 minutes this time and licked my lips and could feel icicles on my mustache; back to the car I went. We drove back to where we had seen the moose and they had disappeared with only bison in sight. :( So once again we drove back to the wolf area and pulled in behind a tour group. My friends Justin and Matt were ahead of the tour and spotted a bull elk on the complete opposite side of the valley where the wolves should have been. While in an aimless conversation with Jenna, Justin happened to pinpoint the two wolves who seemed to be napping after a full meal from a carcass that wasn't too far away. Once I found the area they were in, I took out my large lens and zoomed in all the way with a 500mm zoom and captured this stunning image of the wolves...

There is a grey wolf and black wolf above...It was too far and too cold to wait for them to approach the carcass again so we hopped in the car and headed back. Thinking that we saw two moose and two wolves, we had a great morning in Lamar. But behold, two bighorn sheep appeared, okay, were spotted, on the side of a hill where they decided to do sheep things like eat grass and more sheep things like walking. We didn't get out of the car for this, we just drove by, out of the view of other photographers, and I clicked the button a couple of times and the result was awesomeness.

As we were leaving Lamar, I asked Jenna to pull off so I could capture this photo below. It wouldn't be until I was back in my room on what I may have caught while taking this photo, which will be told in a little while. None the less, the walk down the steep hill in my Vans with low ankle socks in four feet of snow was just a little cold. It did warm up a degree or so; had that going for me...

Walking back up the hill I thought I would give a "frost/ghost" shot of some grass and surprised myself yet again with another favorite photo.

Below is an up close picture of the frost on a string of long grass. The grass seemed to have been grazed by a bison or elk and pinched a single string of hair and held it in its grasp. The cold weather brought in the frost and I caught this nice image. I didn't realize I had caught this until I made it back to my room looking at the photos with a bigger and better screen.

Climbing back through the deep snow up the steep hill I looked up and was filled mainly two colors and was mesmerized for some odd reason. Not sure if I love it for beauty of for the fact you can see cold by looking at it. We made it back into the car and turned the heater on right away to thaw the toes and feet. We drove for 10 seconds and saw the greatest road signs in the world, "Entering No Stopping Zone"! When you see that in the winter, it means great signs of a rough day for an animal and a victorious day for others. We start creeping down the road and three people were on the side of the road with cameras and tripods capturing the images of a coyote having a field day on a fresh elk carcass at the bottom of the valley on the west side of the river. Continuing to creep down the road, behind the great sign facing opposite of us, was another coyote, (that's another pair for the day), was watching and waiting his turn. We drove down to the next pullout and turned around; we didn't want to walk past the coyote, that would be insane. So instead of walking past it, we continued to drive slowly, (I'm typing this a week after and my heart starts to speed up just thinking about this moment), and I had my camera taking pictures after pictures of great close ups, to my opinion, of this, what seemed, tamed animal. It even looks like the coyote is smiling in the two photos below.

A little blurry, but another view of the happy little guy.

Looking up the hill at the other coyote cleaning off his bloody face, he knew it was his time to munch down on some elk meat.

After several minutes of chowing down and looking at the other coyote to make sure it was his turn, he filled his belly. Moments later, the coyote on the hill side had seemed to darted off like something was coming near. Minutes later this coyote jumped though the snow and headed back up the hill where we first spotted him.

So what does he do next? He hops on the road and starts walking down like he owns it. I think this may have been the best meal he's had in a long time.

So I had the mistake of having my camera off and he had a nice pace to his trot and I couldn't get any head on pictures. Having said that, I still had some great photo ops and was thrilled for the rest of the day. There was a bald eagle sitting on a branch waiting for his turn, but the sun wasn't helping me take any photos of him as it was almost staring down the barrel of the lens. We made it the petrified tree where I tried to take some photos of the third moose of the day, but I failed in image stabilization. If only we saw a fox it would have been a three dog day but I think I can settle for a day of two's. Below are more pictures of other views of previously shown shots.